Ukrainians to pull back big guns from front line with separatists

KIEV, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Ukraine's military said on Monday
it was pulling back artillery and heavy armour from the front
line with separatists, backing President Petro Poroshenko's
peace plan for a conflict that has cost more than 3,000 lives.

Taking a noticeably soft line on the Russian-backed
separatists for the first time, military spokesman Andriy
Lysenko said reduced fire from the rebels and Russian forces
meant the Ukrainian army could begin withdrawing heavy weaponry
from a proposed 30-km (19-mile) buffer zone.

His announcement was in line with a call by Poroshenko on
Sunday night for people to back his peace plan which he said was
needed to keep support of the U.S. and other Western
governments.

The president was forced to end an offensive against the
separatists and call a ceasefire on Sept. 5 after big
battlefield losses that Kiev ascribed to the direct intervention
of Russian troops, something Moscow denied despite what Kiev and
the West says is undeniable proof.

Though Ukrainian soldiers continue to die in spite of the
ceasefire - two more were killed in the past 24 hours, Lysenko
said - Poroshenko on Sunday defended his peace plan, saying
Ukrainian deaths had been reduced ten-fold.

Speaking after returning home from a meeting with U.S.
President Barack Obama in Washington, Poroshenko said he would
have risked forfeiting Western goodwill by pressing ahead with a
military offensive against Russian-supported separatists.

NO U.S. WEAPONS

Despite telling the U.S. Congress that Ukraine needed more
than "blankets" from the United States to win the war against
the separatists, his failure to secure a U.S. promise of weapons
from Obama may have convinced him of the need to move forward
more rapidly with the peace process on the ground.

"It's not possible to win ... purely by military means. The
more Ukrainian army battalions or brigades are brought up, the
more troops there are from the Russian Federation," he
acknowledged on Sunday night.

He added that his priorities now were to get all Russian
troops out of the country. "We'll monitor this. We'll say when
the last Russian soldier has left," he said. The border with
Russia had also to be closed.

His military's announcement that it is complying with an
agreement reached in the Belarussian capital Minsk last Friday
for creation of a 30-km buffer zone will strengthen Ukraine at
the U.N. general assembly on Thursday where Prime Minister
Arseny Yatseniuk will put the case for the country.

Military spokesman Lysenko, in rare favourable comments on
the separatists and Russia, said that artillery attacks had
diminished in the past 24 hours and that there had been no
firing from Russian territory.

"A lessening of intensive shelling has been noted. No
violations of the border have been tracked by our border guards.
There was no firing from the territory of the Russian
Federation. All this shows the practical realisation of all the
points of the peace plan," Lysenko told journalists.

"The Ukrainian military is setting an example of how this
should be done," he said.

BUFFER ZONE LINE

Last Friday's Minsk memorandum foresees the warring sides
pulling back their artillery by 15 km on each side to create a
30-km buffer zone between their forces.

Military officials have not identified exactly where the
buffer zone line will run. Much of the recent military action
has been in the city of Donetsk, the region's main industrial
hub with a pre-conflict population of nearly one million.

Lysenko, replying to a question, said only: "It is the line
where there are forces".

Poroshenko's deeper plan may be to calm the waters, albeit
temporarily, ahead of a parliamentary election on Oct. 26 when
he hopes for a strong coalition to emerge in his favour.

His plan to grant limited self-rule for a three-year period
to the independence-minded separatists has left him vulnerable
to criticism at home that he gave in to Moscow and set the scene
for creation of a "frozen conflict" within Ukraine.

The plan, which was bulldozed through parliament at a closed
session, has also been met by derision by the rebels who say
they do not want to be part of Ukraine.
(Additional reporting by Natalia Zinets; Writing By Richard
Balmforth; Editing by Tom Heneghan)